Invest Yourself

So this is it. The culmination of an entire year of ups and downs, and where are we? Statistically flat. The DOW needs 220 points to go green on the year, the S&P is wobbling right at the "unchanged " line.

Yesterday was a low volume melt up. Monday was the lowest volume day of the entire year, and yesterday wasn't much better. When there's so little participation in the market, it becomes easier for relatively small orders to make outsized moves in the overall market. So we gained 200 DOW points and 21 S&P points on....nothing. Nothing but the desire to send 2015 out on a positive note.

Yesterday was a low volume wandering session. After being down as much as 114 points, the afternoon crowd came in and inched us back up. In the last hour of trading I thought we might even poke into green. But we came up a bit shy, closing down just 23.

But the reversal off the lows appears to have started something bigger as the futures this morning are up quite big. We have the DOW up 90, the S&P up 10. Could it be that Santa finally showed up?

Good morning everyone, welcome back from your Christmas weekend. I truly hope it was a great time for you all. Our prayers go out to the folks hit by the wicked weather yesterday, as it is indeed quite sad to see giant tornado's sweeping across the nation in December. Stay safe out there!

Christmas Eve. I am desperately trying to "get in the season" but it's sort of hard considering the weather. I understand it is like 70 in New York. Well we're on track to break the all time Christmas record down here...they're predicting 86 degrees tomorrow!

While I don't miss for one second that goofy white stuff that falls out of the sky, I could surely love some mid 60's and no humidity. As I'm typing this at 8:15 it is 78 degrees and the humidity is 91%. Merry Christmas.

Well it looks like I'm not alone in thinking that 2016 could bring us some big time troubles in market land. As you all know I bought a put option against the DOW a few months back, thinking that the market was finally ready to roll over for a bit. Well that didn't happen.

Yet we just learned that the "put/call" ratio against the S&P 100, the "OEX" is at levels never seen before.

Yesterday was interesting in a lot of ways. We opened big and green, then as we approached the European market close the volume want nuts and we faded all the way from up 150 to RED by a handful. Then the volume dried up, and we inched higher, going green by about 30 points near the 1 pm hour.

We were slightly green for the rest of the session, and then in the last half hour they picked up the momentum and we ended the day up 123 DOW points.

Good morning all, welcome to CHRISTMAS week. Yes it is indeed Christmas week. Not "the winter Holidays" The political correctness crowd can yell and stomp all they want, but people have been celebrating Christmas for generations. Not the winter holidays. Not "the season". Get over it.

I hope you all had a good weekend? We sure did. Our closes friends were down from NJ all last week and we wrapped up with them this weekend by taking them to a very fun place on the Florida coast that we enjoy a lot. They had a magnificent time, and can't stop talking about it. So we succeeded in showing them a good time. It is very sad for us that they fly home as I'm typing this. Truly good friends are a very rare commodity. Cherish them.

Hello everyone, welcome to Friday. It's been quite a week, no? Yes, and the hits just keep coming.

The Fed's gave us their first rate increase in a decade during what can only be described as a fading economy. That's news enough to harp on for quite a while. But it wasn't just that, there were other incredible things happening.

Consider the admiral job Paul Ryan did at selling out the American people once again.